In Death 11 - Judgment in Death

father."
    She blurted it out without realizing it was there, weighing on the center of her mind.
    Roarke, about to explain the readout on-screen, turned, stared at her. She didn't have to say a name, didn't have to say anything. He knew by her face.
    "You're sure of it?"
    "I had a flashback last night... this morning," she corrected, feeling ridiculously unsteady. "Something tripped it, I guess, in the data I was studying, and I was back, just back."
    "Sit down and tell me."
    "I can't sit."
    "All right. Just tell me."
    "I was in bed. In my room. I had a room. I don't think I always had one -- I know I didn't always. But I think there was some money to spare. I think it was Ricker's money. It was dark, and I was listening because he was drinking in the next room, and I was praying he would keep drinking. He was talking to somebody about a deal. I didn't understand. I didn't care. Because as long as he kept talking, kept drinking, he wouldn't come in. It was Ricker. He called him by name."
    It was hard. She hadn't expected it to be so hard to say it all, when the image of it was still so brutally clear in her mind. "Ricker was telling him what would happen if he screwed up the deal. Illegals, I think. It doesn't matter. I recognized his voice. I mean, having the flashback, I remembered. I don't know if I'd ever heard it before that night. I don't remember."
    "Did you see him? Did he see you?"
    "No, but he knew about me. My father said something about me when he was trying to get more money for the deal. So, he knew, and after he left, my father came in. He was mad. Scared and mad. He knocked me around a little, then he told me to pack. We were going to head south, he said. He had money, and I think the illegals, or some of them. I don't remember any more, except it was in New York. I'm sure we were in New York. And I think, I think we ended up in Dallas. After the money ran out, we were in Dallas. There wasn't any more money because we just had that horrible room, and hardly any food, and he didn't have enough to get drunk enough in Dallas. God."
    "Eve." He was beside her now, his hands running up and down her arms. "Stay here. Stay with me."
    "I am. I will. It spooked me, that's all."
    "I know." He gathered her in for a moment. And realized on the heels of the flashback she'd been called to The Tower.
    Ambushed.
    "I'm sorry." He turned her lips into her hair.
    "It's a circle, a circle. Link to link. Ricker to my father, my father to me. Ricker to you. You to me. I don't believe in stuff like that. But here I am."
    "They won't touch you through me." He tipped her head back. "They'll never get through me to hurt you."
    "That's not what I meant."
    "I know, but it's a fact all the same. We'll break the circle. We'll do that together. I'm more inclined to believe in such things as fate."
    "Only when your Irish comes out." She managed a smile but moved away. "Could he know about me? Could he have connected me from all those years ago?"
    "I can't tell you."
    "If he'd tried to track my father, could he have found out who I am? Is it possible to dig up the data on me from before?"
    "Eve, you're asking me to speculate -- "
    "Could you?" she interrupted, facing him again. "If you wanted the information, could you find it?"
    She didn't want comfort, he knew, but facts. "Given the time, yes. But I have considerably more to work with than he would."
    "But he could? He has the capabilities? Particularly if he'd begun to track my father when he was double-crossed."
    "It's possible. I don't believe he'd have wasted his time keeping track of an eight-year-old girl who was sucked into the system."
    "But he knew, when I went to see him, that I had been in the system. He knew where I'd been found, and in what condition."
    "Because he researched Lieutenant Eve Dallas. Not because he'd been keeping tabs on a young, abused girl."
    "Yes, you're probably right. It hardly matters, anyway." She paused by her desk, lifted a small carved box he'd given her for odds and ends. "You could find the data?"
    "Yes, I could find it, if that's what you want."
    "No." She set the box down again. "It's not what I want. What I want is here. There's nothing back there I need to know. I shouldn't have let it get to me the way it did. I didn't realize it had."
    She sighed, and this time she did smile when she turned. "I was too mad at you to think about it. We've got a hell of a lot of work to do in a short amount of time. You might as well come with me for